mountebank

American  

[moun-tuh-bangk] / ˈmaʊn təˌbæŋk /

noun

1. a person who sells quack medicines, as from a platform in public places, attracting and influencing an audience by tricks, storytelling, etc.

   Synonyms:

   pitchman

2. any charlatan or quack.

   Synonyms:

   fraud, pretender, phony

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verb (used without object)

1. to act or operate as a mountebank.

mountebank British  

/ ˈmaʊntɪˌbæŋk /

noun

1. (formerly) a person who sold quack medicines in public places

2. a charlatan; fake

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verb

1. (intr) to play the mountebank

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• mountebankery
  noun

Etymology

Origin of mountebank

1570–80; (< Middle French ) < Italian montimbanco one who climbs on a bench, equivalent to mont ( are ) to climb ( see mount ¹) + -im-, variant of in on + banco bench ( see bank ²)

Explanation

A mountebank has a talent for tricking people into buying things, like the mountebank who charms women into buying "magic beauty pills" for hundreds of dollars, though they are just ordinary vitamins you can buy anywhere. Mountebank, pronounced "MOUN-tih-bank," has an interesting origin, in the Italian phrase "monta in banco." It describes a "doctor" who would "mount a bench" in the marketplace. Standing a bit higher than the crowd enabled people to hear his sales pitch and see the potions and powders he claimed were medical cures that never failed — claims as bogus as his credentials. A mountebank is a fast-talking crook pretending to be an expert.

Example Sentences

Mountebank that he is, Maelzel desperately wishes that the Turk could be a total machine, one that he could control completely.

From Time Magazine Archive

He is a Mountebank, that will bestow nothing but Romantic Praises upon all that he makes us the Offers of.

From The Wonders of the Invisible World Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England, to which is added A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches by Mather, Cotton

“A Mountebank Painter demonstrating to his admirers and subscribers that crookedness is ye most beautifull.”

From English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. by Everitt, Graham

Or is there the spirit of the Mountebank in it?

From Suspended Judgments Essays on Books and Sensations by Powys, John Cowper

I took him at first for a Mountebank, but I plainly saw that the Whimsicalness of his Dress was the Humour of the Country.

From The Memoirs of Charles-Lewis, Baron de Pollnitz, Volume I Being the Observations He Made in His Late Travels from Prussia thro' Germany, Italy, France, Flanders, Holland, England, &C. in Letters to His Friend. Discovering Not Only the Present State of the Chief Cities and Towns; but the Characters of the Principal Persons at the Several Courts. by P?llnitz, Karl Ludwig von